Twitch

Earlier this week I heard a story on my local NPR affiliate about how Twitter – a word that has transcended the confines of a brand name to become part of our everyday vernacular, even spawning its own verb conjugations of the infinitive to tweet – was almost named Twitch. Co-founder Jack Dorsey explains, “We wanted a name that evoked what we did. We wanted something that was tangible. And we looked at what we were doing and when you received a tweet over SMS, your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch. And those were the early names, Jitter and Twitch. And neither one of them really inspired the best sort of imagery.”